Alleged Extravagance

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 92, 13 January 1932, Page 11

Alleged Extravagance

Sir, —Now that the Government is in such desperate need of every penny to balance the Budget I would suggest that an exceptionally extravagant practice of the Public Works Department up till now should be stopped, and not revived again once it is stopped. I refer to the transfer of thousands of married men and their wives and families from one part of the country to the other. I will commence with a period two or three years ago. Hundreds of men and their families and their department houses were sent from the Tauranga line when completed to the Gisborne end of the East Coast railway via Frankton Junction and Palmerston. At the latter place they picked up another hundred or two from the abandoned deviation, many of them having been transferred previously from Mangahau. The whole concourse was sent by train to Napier, thence by service car to Waikokopu and Gisborne, hundreds of houses being transferred from Napier to the above places by lorries, some of the lorries costing the' department £5 per day. All the expenses were paid by the department. When the Gisborne and North Auckland railways were stopped in 1930 all the men referred to and hundreds front North Auckland were transferred by motors to Arapuni and Galatea Estate, the latter being near Tauranga. It will be seen that hundreds of men have completed a round of the North Island at the taxpayers’ expense, and I have it on good authority that it cost as much as £7O to transfer a man and his family and house from Tauranga to the East Coast railway via the route named. It is quite sufficient these hard times if a job is finished to tell a person there is work at' a certain place if he likes to go there. Seeing that hundreds of married men at Arapuni and Galatea have had' up to ten years’ constant work with the benevolent Public Works Department, it is up to them to carry a little of the burden these bad times, especially as they have had houses free and continuity of employment at good rates of pay as high ns £4O per month and as high as £6O nnd more for tunnellers and tradesmen. A small section should not be pampered at the expense of the 50,000 honest unemployed. Will the Government Economy Commission take notice? —I am. etc., “LESS EXTRAVAGANCE.” January 9.